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Transcription
00:00Hi, this is Glen Mitchell, co-author of Popeye, the 60th Anniversary Collection, and I'm
00:17delighted to be doing the audio commentary for my favorite of all the Popeye cartoons,
00:22Goonland. It was released on the 21st of October 1938, animated by Seymour Nicholl and Abner
00:28Matthews and directed, as usual, by Dave Fleischer. We kick straight off with one of those marvellous
00:33songs written for the Fleischer cartoons about Popeye's quest for his long-lost father,
00:37who vanished 40 years earlier. This version differs from Seegar's account, of which more later.
00:43I shall pause now to make way for the song and some classic Popeye mumblings.
00:58Popeye has remarkable lung power despite.
01:21We get the idea that visitors to Goon Island have a tendency not to come back.
01:25By 1938, by the way, Popeye's wanton destruction extends mostly to things that are worn out and
01:30useless anyway, like this wrecked galleon. I always remembered this strange cartoon with
01:40its mysterious King Kong-style island, the warning skull, and the downright peculiar music,
01:45right from seeing it on TV when I was a toddler. I didn't see it again until I was about 20, since
01:49the Fleischer cartoons weren't always easy to find in Britain, and it struck all manner of chords
01:54with me, like revisiting a past life, appropriately eerie. Notice how the goon's strength, menace and
01:59stupidity are set up in this one moment of searching and rock crushing. Having heard of
02:06Coney Island even then, I also understood and remembered that pun about Goony Island.
02:12As Popeye shadows the goon, it's fun to watch his mimicry of the creature
02:25and to hear the confident unfazed manner in which he speaks to him. He ain't scared of nothing.
02:41Well, almost nothing. He appreciates that the goon's en masse is something to be reckoned with.
02:46Oh yes, the telescope into periscope gag. I'm sure that one crops up elsewhere.
02:59Here we have some typical Popeye resourcefulness, defying the laws of physics with his looking
03:03glass and discovering that a goony hair disguise grows naturally on the island.
03:08And here's that all-time favourite ad lib.
03:21Even when changing his expression to that of a goon, Popeye still has only one eye.
03:26Later animators would ignore that anatomical fact. As with the word jeep, some dictionaries,
03:31though not all, credit Seaguar with coining the term goon. The first goon, Alice, had been
03:36introduced as muscular sidekick to the sea hag in a Seaguar Sunday continuity that ran between
03:42December 1933 and July 1934 called Plunder Island. The character horrified some people,
03:48so was later toned down with the addition of clothes and a hat with a flower in it.
03:53Alice was in time sufficiently domesticated to act as babysitter to Sweepy. In the newspaper
03:58strip, the goons speak in a kind of oscilloscope language, difficult to render in sound. The
04:02Fleischer's contented themselves with making them sound like idiots.
04:05Here's Poopdeck Pappy contentedly playing solo checkers in his prison cell.
04:09In Seaguar's version of the tale from 1936, Pappy turns up on an island with mermaids for company.
04:15The Fleischer version places him instead on Goon Island, thus also introducing some other
04:19characters from the Seaguar strip. One of the TV cartoons of the 60s offered a different version
04:24again. Poopdeck Pappy's sour temperament reflects his origins. When publisher William
04:34Randolph Hearst realised that Popeye had acquired a large following among children,
04:39he sent orders for Popeye to become something of a reformed character.
04:43Seaguar reluctantly obeyed, but created Pappy as an outlet for Popeye's former disreputable ways.
04:48They're less offspring and father than Jack and Hyde. Jack Mercer, by the way,
04:52is the voice of both Popeye and his Pappy. It was in the sense of being large, muscular idiots
04:57that the word goon started to be applied to gangsters henchmen in the 1930s, at least in
05:02America. In a similar fashion, British prisoners of war used the word to describe the guards in
05:07the camps, possibly in recollection of the goon guard we see here in charge of Pappy.
05:11Sooner or later, even a monster like Poopdeck Pappy has some paternal instincts, and these are finally awakened when seeing the goons get the better of Popeye.
05:27Sadly, his considerable strength isn't enough for him to break free. It's revealing that,
05:32though a captive, Pappy's obviously the only human to visit the island and survive the experience.
05:38A tough guy, despite being, according to source, somewhere around 96 to 99 years old.
05:44Here we get a switch on the usual climactic spinach eating moment as the can is knocked
05:48from Popeye's hand. The opportunity to take action is transferred instead to his near lookalike father,
05:54but not without building the suspense. After being deprived of the stuff for 40 years,
05:59Pappy has the chance to gain that extra strength he needs from the spinach.
06:03I've always felt that this image of the goons pushing a boulder towards a tied down Popeye
06:08has to be one of the most sadistic images in the whole series.
06:11Those goons aren't taking any chances in killing off poor old Popeye.
06:20Meanwhile, Pappy finally reaches the spinach can. Where would they have been without those pipes?
06:26Now we have the type of spinach surging and bicep gag that's normally reserved for Popeye.
06:31Much of this cartoon is about the transference of roles between father and son.
06:35How many biceps can you get on one arm?
06:43Well, there goes the stone jail. The one thing that's missing from Goonland is the
06:47Fleischer's 3D sets. I'm surprised they didn't use the technique for some of Goon Island's terrain.
06:54There's the pipe in action again as a miniature shovel.
06:57So, it's Pappy to the rescue at last. Trying orthodox means until the lack of time requires
07:02instead a full-body version of Popeye's famous Twisker Punch.
07:09That's a really sickening thud when the boulder lands on the goons.
07:20A quick reconciliation, then it's the back-to-back stance of two fighters against a common enemy.
07:25Notice how the frame has suddenly shrunk as the prelude to one of those terrific jokes
07:29designed to work in theatrical presentation.
07:31Like that moment in A Date to Skate when a guy in the audience throws Popeye a can of spinach.
07:36Still funny on TV, but brilliant in a movie theatre.
07:38The goons fall into oblivion courtesy of a broken film, and the audience heckles while
07:42the projectionist makes a dubious showman's join.
07:45I've seen makeshift splices like that in old library prints.
07:48And so, father and son share the familiar theme song for the famous Twisker Punch.
07:55A finale to this all-time classic.
07:57I've enjoyed it, and I hope you have too.
07:59Bye for now.